


The Promise

by bulletandsophia



Series: Endless [3]
Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, F/M, Hurt/Comfort, Immortality, Reincarnation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-08
Updated: 2017-04-08
Packaged: 2018-10-16 09:21:58
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,634
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10568355
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bulletandsophia/pseuds/bulletandsophia
Summary: Jon has never been more in love with the rain.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Enjoy! :)

The leaves have glistened and water drips from their little bodies ever since the pitter-patter of rain began at dawn.

Jon inhales the fragrant brew of his coffee as he listens to the continuous pour, delighted with the sound upon the glass rooftop of his study while happily ignoring the blank document on his laptop where he is supposed to write about _something_ and submit the contents later this afternoon to his editor.

He tried, countless times to fill in the void, but he’s simply in a trance with the rain right now that no other scenario or topic or at the least, a _proper word,_ crosses his mind at the moment—except maybe for a certain memory that transports him to that one particular day (lifetimes away) where he was standing underneath a shed and it was also raining just like this; not too heavy, no strong winds, but plenty enough to get soaked.

He was just there waiting on the next bus minding his own business, eyes downcast, when he saw a pair of red boots that stopped just beside him.

He looked up and there she was.

In red boots and a sundress; with a small smile to offer, then a few words, then a lengthy conversation; then he breathed in some courage and asked for her number, then a few days after, it was a date. Then another. Then another.

Jon had never been more in love with the rain since.

So now, he cannot convince, for the life of him, to ignore the weather and do his work. He sips from his coffee again and ignores the looming deadline. Jon settles the mug back on his desk and stretches, ending up slouching on his chair and looking up at his glass rooftop, mesmerized at the trickle and the ripples of the rain, his eyes following the stream down to the glass walls of the room, even further as the water lands on the shrubberies of the garden.

The room was supposed to be her reading area. What with the great and natural lighting of the glass house plus the surrounding scenery of their small patch, it’s just perfect for it and for her.

But Sansa— _his Sansa_ —insisted that he takes it instead, concerned about the lack of space and proper ventilation of the basement.

“How could you even be inspired to write in that hole?” she said then.

When he took over the glass room though, Jon was not prepared for another kind of writing distraction. Because like her, the beauty of the room is just overwhelming, sometimes even disabling him to think properly; unconsciously and carelessly dropping his guard, and that perhaps for once in his numerous lifetimes, he has forgotten that it may all vanish, that when he dreams of fire again, it will be all gone.

Evidently for Sansa, the summer rains have already washed away any remnants of their last encounter. He believes she doesn’t even own a pair of ice skates today.

And the heartache of her not knowing is still something Jon carries with him at every parting. Whenever he wakes up in an unfamiliar place, feeling empty because of Sansa’s absence, he almost instantly begins his search just to gain back a semblance of whatever pleasure and bliss he had possessed from the day before.

In the repetitiveness and yet the unpredictability of how he lives, Jon’s able to already build a ritual. Usually, when he wakes up to a new life, he starts with deep breaths and a concentration impenetrable in order to let his senses guide him towards Sansa immediately. If he feels nothing, next is to acquaint himself to the life the gods have given him.

This life, this life where he’s become a writer and Sansa a teacher, is not a difficult one to face. In fact, he basks in it.

When he woke up sweating from the nightmare that transported him to this life, there already was a manic energy running through his veins that Jon didn’t need to think twice to know that she was already nearby.

And nearby she was.

Just a few doors away from his small apartment then, the loud clanging metal bowls that crashed when he passed by the corridor prompted him to make a move and frantically knock on her door.

“Sorry,” Sansa shrugged sheepishly. “I was just trying to bake.”

She had flour in her hair and a hastily tied apron on her waist. She looks so alarmingly charming and just _so Sansa_ Jon felt wobbly at the knees—an instance he still tries to deny for the benefit of his slightly bruised masculine ego (but who was he kidding, anyway? There definitely was a weak muscle jerk of some sort that occurred.)

Wobbly knees or not, and as archaic and passé it must have looked and felt, he protected what was his— _is_ his—almost immediately. No blonde, blue-eyed, suitor can ever lay their claim on her.

 _Not on this lifetime_.

Jon bitterly laughs at the thought, claiming his coffee mug again and shaking his head. Albeit considering that time is not his enemy, he knows that time is something he still fears the most. Because even if endless, it’s never the same.

He doesn’t know long or how short each of these episodes with her would be. Worse, Jon cannot reconcile still if this _gift_ of never-ending beginnings compensates not only the loss of their first and original life, but perhaps and most importantly, compensates the loss of having a _real life_ together.

Because what is infinity if without meaning?

Sometimes a version would allow him just a glimpse of her on a train compartment before instantly waking up to a different scenario. Sometimes, like most of the others, it is a life so full of her, almost always allowing him to reach an epiphany—a certain satisfaction—only to be played a fool once more.

She had been a ballerina, a chef, a painter, a model; a roster of beautiful versions of herself but all beginnings, all stories, all without end.

Jon stares at the blank document on his laptop again. Undeniably, whatever pleasures the rain has brought is starting to dwindle and get lost in his overstuffed thoughts.

Patience, he realizes, has never been his forte. And the painful truth that goes along with his impatience, that also sometimes hover just above his head, does not fail to make him wince whenever it presents itself:

He is tired.

He is tired of losing her. Of seeking her. Of finding her only to lose her again.

Sometimes, in the worst of days, he is not just tired but he is hopeless. Surely, Jon wonders, there is something in this sorcery he must learn? Because a wonder (or a punishment) such as the cycle of his life must come in with some sort of a grand reveal, should it not? Because in the scheme of things, _why must this happen?_ Why him? Why Sansa? Should he not have saved those people from long ago? Should he not have listened to her?

Or perhaps, _should he not have loved her so?_

Faintly he remembers of a journey he took and the anticipation of coming back to her only to be welcomed by a crumbling castle; of people screaming, of monsters running amok, of Sansa desperately trying to wake up someone underneath a tree with the red leaves. He was not fast enough to reach the two of them before one of the monsters— _the Night King_ —appeared and pointed a frozen sword to her neck. Then the wind howled and the whispers echoed amidst the falling snow. Quiet and creeping like a ghost. A prophecy; words spoken by a priestess in front of a blazing fire, as if reminding him, reminding her.

Whenever a new memory resurfaces itself, Jon now makes sure to write them all down. If he wanted answers and make light of what he has done, wrongly or otherwise, laying it all down on paper and deciphering it no matter how tedious and sometimes even far-fetched it all seemed, is his only chance of understanding.

Jon pulls his desk drawer and retrieves his second leather-bound journal where he has been jotting down more of his recent discoveries. He flips through the pages and sees accounts from his dream some previous days ago.

The dream on the newest entry was no different from the others before it—still grainy, quick, and flashing—and the bullet points on the journal mark what he randomly remembers: feeding crows, a training yard, a rounded man with a shy but sincere smile, some heavy chains, and lots and lots of snow.

But one in particular evidently stood out as he wrote it down in capital letters, two hard lines underneath: _THE WALL_.

Jon closes his eyes to fully picture it again—a view from a far where he sees the top slightly glistening from the sunlight and then another angle, this time closer where its crevices reveal hues of icy blue. Sharp and almost deadly.

In his mind, whether it was real or just his make-believe, the Wall is arresting and breathtaking.

Jon wonders if Sansa could have seen such a view, would she weep the way he almost did in that dream? More so, is the Wall something that is also hidden and kept in that selfish part of her mind that does not allow her to remember anything at all?

Partly, and feeling a thud on his chest because of some small guilt, maybe that’s what he only wants to happen. That maybe this infinity of beginnings is meant for him to fulfill this one thing:

_For Sansa to remember._

Jon knows that it is his greed taking over whenever the idea crosses his mind. But he cannot shake it away simply because of the pure bliss that idea brings once fulfilled. Because how great would it be if Sansa remembers not only the Jon from this life but also the Jon that he truly is?  

 _The bastard—_ and yet the man she first truly loved _._

Sacrificed her life for.

And so, he insisted. In his selfishness, he insisted and he tried and he handed over his first leather journal to Sansa one night, masking it as part of a manuscript he intends to publish. Jon is hoping that even in the obscurity of his words, it could trigger something in her.

But in all the days that he has seen her read the journal, nothing seems to resonate. Sometimes, she’d even share commentaries at how awful it would be to live in a castle. He barely remembers it too but Sansa’s easy dismissal is like a puncture to his heart.

Uncharacteristically so, he never knew he could be that desperate. Or better yet, _unfair_.

Jon runs a hand through his hair, frustrated at himself for expecting too much from Sansa when he perfectly knows only he could remember even if his own memories are foggy, but after a while allows himself some reprieve because how many times had he done this chase again?

Too many.

He glances at the glass walls again, ignoring the certain dread not even brought about by the publishing deadline he knows he won’t be able to make.

The plants outside are lush and vividly green and the rain has turned into a drizzle, the sound of their fall on the roof almost nonexistent. Later he knows, when the rain stops fully, Sansa would ask if he would like to take a walk outside.

“To clear your head.” she’d always say. Then, she would take his arm and guide him through their garden’s mixture of wildness and grace until it is almost dusk, until he forgets his sorrows at least for another day.

“You’re not procrastinating, are you?” a voice rings in the room.

Jon turns his head to see Sansa standing in the doorway, arms crossed and with a teasing smile on her face.

He can only chuckle and shake his head in bewilderment. Of course, she would show up as if he willed her to do so. Their timing, as always, is just unexplainable.

He watches as she crosses the distance of the room and like a reflex, he reaches out to her and pulls her to sit on his lap.

“I think I got it.” she excitedly murmurs to him, resting a hand on his shoulder.

“What?”

“I couldn’t believe I haven’t thought of this before because it truly is just the best idea and then thinking about it now, _why haven’t you thought of it, Jon, you basically spelled it all out_ —”

 _“Sansa.”_ Jon rolls his eyes. “Can you just please…”

She lets out a chuckle and playfully shoves him before replying.

“ _Eddard._ ” she finally whispers as if it is the most obvious thing.

Jon almost jerks at the name. He feels his nerve dance as she utters it and yet he finds himself unable to move. And before he can even force his hand to take hers, to probably pacify himself, Sansa speaks again.

“If it’s a boy I think I would love to name him Eddard, like the one from your book.” she lovingly caresses his face as she explains. “It’s such a lovely name.”

Slowly regaining his composure, Jon finally let his hand rest on her swollen belly, gently running against her softness.

Sansa smiles again, “What do you think?”

He cannot even begin to tell her what he thinks. That he is petrified and yet fluid as water? That he has forced himself to make her remember because this is the longest they have been together without nightmares or fires or the threat of starting over again? That she is carrying his child and there is nothing in the world that he wants but to see through the entirety of this lifetime; that he did not want this to end like a dream abruptly cut just when everything is perfect—like how she is, always in his life, a perfect dream so far out, so unreachable and yet _just here_ , loving him, naming his son after a father she does not even remember…

No, having her for eternity is not even enough, not even close.

“You are quiet,” she takes a nervous glance. “You don’t like it?”

That is an understatement.

“ _I love it_ , Sansa.” Jon is finally able to say. “You cannot even imagine how much.”

Her smile is bright as he pulls her closer to him. “I think I can.”

The kiss, like their story, feels endless. And Jon hears himself moan as Sansa moves her head away from him only to speak again.

“Your deadline, Jon.”

“ _What deadline?_ ”

She chuckles lightly before standing and offering a hand. “Maybe we could take a walk, to clear your head?”

Jon takes a second before reaching for her hand only to memorize her in this form—braid in one side, a sundress that hung snugly to her body—all pregnant and glowing—a warm smile, cheeks rosy perhaps due to his kiss, an arm that welcomes and waits, and her eyes, eyes that are so blue Jon could care less if he drowns in them.

He would not let this slip away. 

This—this is the dream he wants to forever dwell in.

Closing the journal on his desk, Jon makes another promise. And he does not even need Sansa to say the words for they are already imprinted in his mind.

 _Save them_.

And he finally knows just who.

Slightly enlightened, with Sansa still waiting in front of him, Jon finally stands from the chair and takes her hand, stealing a quick and determined kiss before saying, “Yes, I think I would like that.”

* * *

 


End file.
